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Elias Tcherikower Collection

Elias Tcherikower (1881-1943). Papers, 1903-1963. (RG 81)

Jewish historian, and political activist in the Labor Zionist
movement at the turn of the twentieth century. Co-founder of the YIVO
Institute in Vilna in 1925, he was a member of the YIVO Executive Board
and secretary of the Historical Section of YIVO. Between 1918 and 1920,
he was involved in a project in Kiev to collect and publish documents
on pogroms in the Ukraine during the civil war. He was a founder of the
Mizrakh Yidisher Historisher Arkhiv (Ostjuedisches Historisches
Archiv), established in Berlin in 1921 to preserve and publish the
pogrom documents. He also was involved in celebrated court cases, such
as the 1926-1927 Paris trial of Shalom Schwarzbard, assassin of Simon
Petlyura; and the 1934-1935 Bern trial regarding the Protocols of the
Elders of Zion. Contributor to and editor of numerous periodicals and
encyclopedias, he was the author of historical works on the Jews of
France and the labor movement in the United States.

Elias Tcherikower Collection (3,500 volumes)

His extensive library and archives were hidden in France during
World War II and later brought to YIVO in New York. The Tcherikower
Collection is especially strong in its documentation, in several
languages, of Jewish life in the Russian Empire. Some of the
Russian-language pamphlets and books from the Tcherikower Collection
are available on microfilm from Brill Publishers. Tcherikower's papers, photographs, and other
artifacts (important primary sources on the anti-Jewish pogroms in
Ukraine in 1918-1920) are among the holdings of the YIVO Archives.